Aleph One 1.8 is available from https://alephone.lhowon.org/
The major new feature for this release is support for Steam and achievements. The standalone builds see a few changes and bug fixes as well.
Apple should go out of their way to make it easy to emulate classic Mac OS on modern Apple devices. Whether by providing an approved source of ROMs and system software, or just stating that it’s fine to distribute those things on the App Store. I don’t think they really care about those things existing online, so why not make them more accessible? It’d be fun, educational, and just a good thing to do.
Tonight on Tuesday Night Avara, I’m testing Head (@tra) and Lucifer’s spawn-killing prevention measures for the first time while simultaneously trying not to lose my temper after KeeL kills me for the hundredth time. https://www.twitch.tv/avara_silverfox
Left: August 6, 2018
Right: August 8, 2018
@croc@avara.dev somehow found and fixed a matrix multiplication error (I transposed two subscripts), ending my weeks-long suffering, and instantly fixing BSP rendering. It was a four character change, but seeing actual Avara BSPs rendered completely reinvigorated the port. We also introduced a new JSON format for BSPs, so we could stop reading them out of resource forks.
My work on this project is frequently motivated by something I want to be able to do as a level designer. Sometimes, the work itself inspires me to create a new level as a showcase! Around the time of the transparent rendering fixes, I made an updated version of my old KOTH map, Mill. The new version is called Don Quixote, features multiple recessed glass platforms, fixes the Z-fighting on the teleporters, and replaces the KOTH logic with my updated solution which supports all 8 teams.
Once the other devs were satisfied with the rendering refactor (it went through a couple design iterations), I decided I'd try my hand at enhancing the renderer. I've been slowly laying the ground work for deferred rendering, and one of the steps is to render transparent geometry once the opaque geometry is completed. This, combined with sorting the transparent faces (with extra help from Head) has finally rounded several rough edges with rendering transparent geometry! Before and after:
Going to try logging updates and thoughts here from now on. Thanks to @vertigo for setting things up! I've already talked briefly about refactoring asset management elsewhere, but shortly after that I refactored Avara's rendering code as well and learned a lot about OpenGL in the process. An interesting side effect is that it appeared to reduce app memory usage by roughly a third. Here are some boring before/after shots to show that nothing (aside from code quality) changed.
